Why follow UK? Keep our education system

It’s great that you’re not looking at having to make any compulsory purchases to acquire the required land in order to extend the two schools you intend to keep. Yet, you ignore the fact that both schools that you aren’t considering have enough land to build the required extensions. In fact, La Mare de Carteret would be a blank sheet on which to build and therefore would be ideal.

You could build a multi-storey school and not lose any of the land and the school would then have more adequate facilities. Grammar has acres of surrounding land that is all part of the school, whereas both Les Beaucamps and St Sampson’s have no such areas, hence the need to purchase additional land.

Now why is it that the States of Guernsey never look at how the island follows behind the UK in trends and just about everything? The UK did away with grammar schools years ago, or at least reduced the number. Now, following the usual trend, the States Education committee is going to get rid of our much-needed Grammar School as part of their new school lower education system. Why don’t the committee look to the current trend in the UK and see what’s happening over there now? Is that to much to ask, to expect them to look ahead for once and not just simply follow the exact same trends X amount of years behind as usual.

Why can’t the States, in this case, the Education committee, do that and see the results of removing the grammar schools in the UK?

It was a bad decision, and right now in the UK grammar schools are being reintroduced.

Would it not therefore be beneficial to buck the trend, fast forward and keep what we have now?

Wouldn’t it be far better to learn from the UK’s experience and save ourselves the hardship?

Save ourselves the aggravation from learning through our own experience. Surely this is a better option. I know that I’d rather learn from someone else’s experience, good or bad, and save myself from making the same mistakes and avoid the pitfalls.

The Education committee are acting like a bunch of teenagers who think they have come of age, they think that they know it all, but they don’t. They continue to display their lack of knowledge and obviously want to ensure that those who pass through the island’s education system receive the same level of education as they did. Sadly, it’s not their own lives that they are playing with. If it was, I’d quite happily push them over the cliff and see how they survive the fall.

A one-size-fits-all philosophy isn’t going to work when it comes to education. So forget the need to purchase more land for expansion and ditch the whole idea completely and get on and build La Mare de Carteret School.

Speaking of La Mare de Carteret, isn’t it strange how long it took the States to debate over whether to rebuild the school or not. I mean the debate didn’t even begin until years after the school had passed its sell-by date and then it was on, off, on, off, round and round.

Finally they decide that £66m. is too much to spend on rebuilding the school.

JOHN DE CARTERET,

17, Delancey Court,

Rue des Monts,

St Sampson’s,

GY2 4HX.

Editor’s footnote: Education, Sport & Culture declined to comment.